Computer design tools useful for industrial design are most commonly “computer aided design” (CAD) based. Users of CAD programs often undergo training and have much experience in the use of CAD before their proficiency reaches a level high enough for complex design and engineering.
In the automotive industry, car body designers typically sketch their designs. Car body designers are creative artists who produce styling sketches and typically do not use CAD programs. From sketches and discussion with the car body designer, a CAD designer will rework the sketch onto the computer. Accordingly, the sketch is engineered into three-dimensional detail. There are often many instances of refinement discussed between the artist and CAD user. Oftentimes, for example, the designer's sketches are not in correct perspective and details may need to be added and changed, and therefore, the process to completion by a CAD user may become tedious and repetitive. The CAD tool requires construction of a shape, piece by piece. The overall shape may not emerge until a significant amount of work has been done.
It would be advantageous for a designer to have available a design tool that is simple to operate and can readily replace hand sketching, and whose resultant design is captured in a computer file. In particular, it would be advantageous to provide the designer a tool that allows the designer to impose, for example, engineering criteria into a design. Therefore, the time consuming step of refinement between the artist and a CAD designer may be substantially eliminated.
In automobile design, a designer most likely must keep the design within certain style parameters and within certain engineering criteria. For example, the task at hand for the designer may be to design a new CADILLAC. In this way, it may be advantageous for the designer to have available CADILLAC designs and then to change some aspect or another to create a new look in keeping with the brand character of the CADILLAC. Engineering criteria, on the other hand include, for example, aerodynamic drag and any other criteria that represents quantities often derived from large analytical calculations.
Alternatively, a designer may want to create a design that is an intermediate between two designs, or is a blend of three or more designs while maintaining control over certain engineering criteria. In any of these events, the process currently depends on the designer's strong familiarity with the various automobiles' designs. In this way, the ability to use a computer to maintain data on designs and create automobile designs from any number of combinations would be particularly advantageous for the design process.
Complex design shapes such as automobiles may have topologies that vary greatly. The list of automobiles, even for just one automobile manufacturer, is extensive and the styling is diverse and includes many discrete variations. The functional categories of automobiles for a single manufacturer may include coupes, sedans, SUVs, sports cars, and trucks. Secondary categories may include minivans, wagons and convertibles. A computer based design tool that would allow a designer to combine any number of models to form a resultant new style or model would be advantageous.
It would be advantageous if the design tool visually offered to the artist a plurality of automobiles to choose from and provided the ability to combine them into a combined resultant automobile design. If the designer desires a sportier car, or, for example, a BUICK to be more CADILLAC-like, or to use the grill of one car on another car, it would be advantageous to provide in a design tool the flexibility to the user to reach his design goals or otherwise explore options.
Once a user has created a resultant combined design by combining as many models as desired, an additional benefit would come from the ability to change or morph that resultant design. A design tool that would be useful for morphing automobile designs is preferably flexible enough to allow a designer to explore different combinations and then provide the ability to morph the resultant design into many possible designs.
Furthermore, a design tool that provides many options for morphable features, and allows the addition of constraints on the features in the morphing process, would be advantageous as well.
In this manner it would be also advantageous that a computer operable design tool provide the output so that after the vehicle designer's initial design is complete, a CAD programmer would then be able to work from the output.